PLC w/force transducer

Good Morning-

Curious if anyone can provide some help -

I have a potential customer who is looking to perform tests on the sharpness of razor blades. They would like to drag a nested blade across a flat sheet of paper and measure the force required to cut through the paper to determine how sharp the blade is.

Anyone know of a PLC devvice which can zero a force transducer and perform this type of function repeatedly. They are low budget so I need to be cost sensitive. Really appreciate your insight!

John

Are you designing the mechanical aswell as the electrical?

For quick, dirty, and possibly inaccurate and buggy, I invision a blade holder on a belt drive powered by a small electric motor.
Force could acctually be calculated by using a current monitor on the motor leads. The PLC could also be programmed with a self calibration.

Just throwing the first Idea.


Tim

apply a fixed force load on the blade, and measure (using a poistioning encoder) how much travel across the paper until the blade cuts through the paper. (distance = sharpness).

I assume your test paper is on a indexing scroll. Is the paper suspended, or pulled across a flat surface? This will determine how you will detect when the paper is cut.

How do you plan on sorting good from bad?

Do they really test razor blades?